This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki

Compared to Skim, This One Summer makes for a rather milquetoast affair. That is not to say that is bad but I did find the story and characters to be bland and very much been-there-done-that. This could have worked if the narrative had presented us with a more compelling protagonist than Rosie who is a painfully generic teen who yearns to be seen as one of older teens and not a kid. Every summer she and her parents stay at a lake house in Awago Beach. There she reconnects with Windy, her childhood friend, who is a year younger than she (a fact which rosie is low-key embarrassed by). Rosie’s parents are going through something and Rosie acts like an entitled brat. She begins renting horror films in order to impress a boy who is clearly a bad egg, going so far as to slag-off other girls. Windy, however one-dimensional, was a much more likeable character. Rosie’s angsting, however ‘understandable’ given that her parents are fighting and she’s currently traversing those painful & awkward teen years, still irked me. She elicited very little sympathy on my part. Whereas the story in Skim never bored me, here I found many scenes to be redundant and repetitive. There was something vaguely moralistic about the ending too and Rosie’s ‘growth’ didn’t entirely ring true. Still, the illustrations, while a bit more conventional than Skim, are lovely and if you are a fan of the Tamaki duo, well, you should consider giving this one a chance.

my rating: ★★½

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